Wired News: Bush on electronic health records

Wired News: Bush: on electronic health records: "Bush also set a goal for most Americans to have electronic health records within 10 years. Paper ones, he says, can lead to errors, inefficiencies and poor communication among doctors and nurses. To help reach the goal, the president is creating a national health information technology coordinator, a sub-Cabinet-level position." -- This makes a lot of sense (privacy implications, aside) -- in light of the friction and graft that incomprehensible, incompatible, unaggregatable paperwork adds to the healthcare process. Greater transparency in the billing process driven by XML-style data streams between healthcare providers, insurers and patients, would decrease the number of costs that remain hidden to patients. Of course, those "hidden costs" always show up ont he final bill... Trends in ailments and their treatments could be aggregated and mined more effectively -- perhaps diagnosing potential epidemics before they reach truly epidemic proportions.